Tag Archives: benefits

Floating and anxiety

May 22, 2014About Floatinganxiety, benefits, consciousness, depression, flotation REST, meditation, psychological, PTSD, relaxation, science, stresscolin

For me, anxiety is the big one — the real pressing problem for the largest number of people, that can be most helped by floating. By far the best review of the subject I know of is the video below by Justin Feinstein of CalTech. You can just watch it if you like (it’s half an hour and quite accessible), or continue with my discussion below.

“Floating provides a window into the lowest reaches of our brain: a window that allows us to see the rhythm of our life, a window that allows us to literally feel the flow of sentience completely untethered from the external world. … [Anxiety is] a rhythm that constantly outpaces the beat of life itself, and importantly it’s a rhythm that can be slowed down by floating.”

Continue reading Floating and anxiety →

Floating and injury recovery

February 10, 2014About Floatingathletics, benefits, flotation REST, injury recovery, pain relief, physiological, science, whiplashcolin

In 1994 a young Australian cyclist named Brett Dennis rode off a cliff in the US Tour DuPont road race, falling 12 feet and smashing his femur through his hip socket. Doctors gave him little chance of walking properly again. Back home in Australia two weeks later, with a steel pin through his broken pelvis, Dennis was understandably depressed and near to giving up his sporting ambitions.

But at the Australian Institute of Sport, Dennis was put onto a program of intensive physiotherapy. He also spent an hour a day playing “mind games” — closing his eyes and visualising a blue light traveling from his chest to his hip joint, washing away damaged tissue and replacing it with new cells.

Continue reading Floating and injury recovery →

Media roundup

October 13, 2013Float Experiencesart, awareness, benefits, energy, experience, flow, media, relaxation, yogacolin

The media has been full of floating this month! Some great articles.

“In the Tank”, The Nation: “Some of sensory deprivation’s sublime attraction seems to lie in the way it fortifies the floater against the perceived harm of twenty-first-century culture.”

“Floating into Hoop Flow”, hooping.org: Katelyn Selanders lost touch with her art, and got it back in the tank. “As she continued to float, the feeling of Hoop Joy swept over her, that magic energy you feel when the hoop beats rhythmically across your core, when you shoot it off your body up into the sky like a shooting star, and when you break the hoop against the beat and don’t know or care what your next move is going to be. Without even being aware of it, she had floated back into her flow.”

“Why Yogis Should Try Isolation Tanks”, My Yoga Online: “Pratyahara [withdrawal of the senses] is considered by BKS Iyengar to be the ‘hinge’ or pivotal point in the yogic journey, because it is the step where we move from our behaviors and action in the outside world, to diving deep within in order to ‘gain knowledge of the self’.”

Silent Spectrum from Mel Be on Vimeo.

Continue reading Media roundup →

Epsom salt and magnesium

September 27, 2013About Floatingarthritis, benefits, blood pressure, bone strength, bowel disease, diabetes, epsom salt, heart, magnesium, migraines, muscle tension, physiological, science, skin, sleepcolin

A float tank contains a lot of epsom salt. Like, a lot a lot. Eight hundred to a thousand pounds each, to make the water so dense you literally can’t help but float.

Epsom salt bags — Amount of Epsom salt that goes into one float tank. © Float On

People sometimes wonder, though, why epsom salt? It’s hardly the easiest thing we could lay our hands on in bulk. Most importantly, it’s harmless to soak in for long periods, and it doesn’t cause the itchy, pruny feeling you get from soaking in sea salt. But there are other benefits.

Epsom salt is called that because it was first produced from natural springs at Epsom, England, around 1618, and from 1695 chemists and pharmacies were selling purified “bitter salts” all over England. For three hundred years since it’s been used to cure just about anything, from muscle aches to skin health, foot odor, wrinkles, psoriasis, eczema, mosquito bites, bruises, inflammation, hangovers, migraines, constipation, and the common cold.

Do any of these really work? Let’s look at the science.

Continue reading Epsom salt and magnesium →

Floating and creativity

September 25, 2013About Floatingaltered states, benefits, creativity, experience, flotation REST, joe rogan, performance, sciencecolin

Peter Gabriel, the musical legend, says, “[My isolation tank] was quite useful, in the sense that you could get into a dream state, and I think that did allow…different thoughts and pictures to come through.”

Joe Rogan, the comic and MMA host, says, “The sensory deprivation chamber is the most important tool I’ve ever used for developing my mind, for thinking, for evolving.”

Matt Stangel of the Portland Mercury reports that after floating, “I began to write creatively for the first time in months, but with an uninhibited ease that I haven’t experienced in almost five years. In short, I was astounded by the changes I saw in myself.”

What’s going on here? Why does everyone seem to come out of the tank talking about peace, clarity, and cosmic oneness, or “colors — of cars, of buildings, of the sky — [being] more lush“, or achieving “profound, ecstatic nothingness“, or even “like a DJ had showed up to the party and started remixing my brain“? People seem convinced the tank increases their creativity, but does it really, or are they just tripping?

Continue reading Floating and creativity →